Michael Belowstcy, age 12, of East Brunswick, New Jersey, for his question:

Why is the North Star the brightest?

Stars, like everything else, tend to lose their identities when crowded together. A star shines its best when off by itself against the dark background of the night sky. The northern region of the sky is rather thinly populated with stars    and certainly Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest of them. If you are looking in this direction, it seems to shine forth as the brightest star in the heavens. Actually it is not. Suppose you could move it, way across the sky to Arcturus in the constellation Bootes. Comparing the two stars side by side you would see the Arcturus is much brighter than Polaris. So is the big star Pollux in the constellation Gemini.

At least 20 other stars are brighter than Polaris    but they are not always visible. Deneb, Altair and big bright Antares appear in the contellations we see during the summer. Betelguese, Rigel and Aldebaran adorn our winter skies. And the brightest of all the stars we see from the earth also appears in winter. It is Sirius, the dazzling Dog Star    much, much brighter than our faithful year round North Star.